Last week, I was catching up with a designer who worked at Gucci in 2004, back when Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole famously and semi-acrimoniously left the group, which is now part of Kering. At the time, Gucci C.E.O. Giacomo Santucci put three people in charge to replace Ford: John Ray ran menswear, Alessandra Facchinetti designed women’s, and Frida Giannini looked after accessories. (There was also Karen Joyce, responsible for image and advertising.) Within two years, both Ray and Facchinetti were gone—Mark Lee, the former YSL C.E.O., was now in charge of Gucci, and did away with the complicated structure. Giannini had won, and would remain the creative director for nearly 10 years. By the time she got fired at the end of 2014, the brand message was severely watered down, allowing for one of her longtime, long-repressed deputies, Alessandro Michele, to step up and unleash his maximalist id.